Betelgeuse fades by more than a magnitude

Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 17 related

1. Story
2. The nearest red supergiant dimmed visibly enough to change the appearance of Orion to the naked eye, prompting widespread speculation that it was about to explode. Resolved imaging showed the southern hemisphere of the star far darker than usual. Work published in Nature in 2021 attributed the episode to a clump of dust condensing above a patch of the photosphere that had cooled, following an ejection of material from the surface; later analyses indicate that a temperature drop and circumstellar dust extinction contributed in comparable measure. It was mass loss, not imminent collapse.
3. Knowledge
4. Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis)
5. Red giant and asymptotic giant branch
6. Betelgeuse fades by more than a magnitude
7. Connections
8. Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis)
9. Red giant and asymptotic giant branch
10. Red giant and asymptotic giant branch
11. Betelgeuse fades by more than a magnitude
12. A close companion to Betelgeuse is probably detected
13. Main sequence (core hydrogen burning)
14. Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis)
15. Planetary nebula
16. White dwarf
17. Betelgeuse fades by more than a magnitude
18. Evidence
19. Attributes the 2019-2020 Great Dimming to a dust clump condensing above a cooled patch of the photosphere. Journal and volume come from search summaries; the paper was not fetched. Later work, including a 2022 Astrophysical Journal paper describing a surface mass ejection and 2024 tomography, indicates temperature drop and dust extinction contributed in comparable measure.